Chapter 37 #2
Jarek laughs at my sullen comment, long and loud.
When he finally stops, he leans over me and kisses me hard.
“No, he couldn’t, not anymore than I could have or Cadel could have.
We would face death a hundred thousand times rather than see you hurt.
But your being hurt is still alive, Kaida.
That means there was a chance to save you. Dead is dead.”
“I don’t care.”
“He came back and did chest compressions, keeping me alive. Making sure I didn’t pass, if that makes a difference?”
“He came back?” Okay, it makes a tiny bit of a difference.
“Of course, he came back. I think he must have just missed you. His first thought was of you. He didn’t even wait for me to recover enough, just took off after them.”
I stare through Jarek. “I need to think. Please. I…things happened, and things changed, and I don’t know, but I need to think.”
Jarek sighs and lays back down. “Okay, then I will stay with you until you work it out.”
I reach out and cover one of his hands with mine. Outside, I’m calm, but inside, I’m screaming. It’s like it was one thing too far, and something inside me is not willing to go back in the cage.
My scent is mixed and unpleasant, but no one says anything. No one asks me to do anything.
When I wake next, it’s dark, but I know Jarek is gone, and instead, I find Cadel sitting quietly beside me. For a long time, we stare at each other, and I’m so lost in my thoughts, I don’t know what I’m thinking. Just that I wish we’d met somewhere else.
“Do you remember me?” he asks in a whisper of sound.
“Of course, I do, you’re Cadel,” I say tartly.
He sighs. “Okay, that’s fine. I can live with this.”
I sit up. “I don’t understand.”
He smiles wryly, with a hint of longing and bitterness. “Fate works in mysterious and cruel ways.”
His smile falls as he watches me.
“How long are you going to ignore Mordecai for?”
“He left me there.”
“I know.”
“How can I trust him now?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Resistance left me as well.”
Cadel turns suddenly, yanking me out of the nest I’ve made for myself and into his lap.
“We came for you. We brought an army to rescue you. There will never be a time that we don’t come for you. He,” Cadel stresses, “came for you, he would have gone alone.”
I exhale roughly, trying to hold back the emotion but I can’t. It floods over, spills from me untapped.
“He killed my family.”
Not Mordecai. It’s just the two are all entangled up in my mind, and I can’t face one without facing the other.
“The Beta’s Fang killed my family.”
The words come out of me, broken, torn up, revealing me for the half grown omega I still am, the one who misses her mother, who wants her aunt, who wants to go back to a time when I was innocent and could just play all day.
Cadel stills, and then his arms come up around my back and pull me harder into his body.
“We’ll kill him. Before this is done, you will have your revenge. It won’t bring them back, but we can stop him from hurting anyone else.”
I bury my face in his shoulder and cry for me, for my cousin, for my aunt and all the neighbours that helped raise me.
There’s still two mysteries left. What happened to my mother and my two year old cousin, Caelyn? Perhaps I will never know, and now I’m not sure I want to.
I see Mordecai, and my temper flips.
With a snarl, I pull free of Cadel, jump up, and stalk towards him. I pull back and slap him. He doesn’t react.
I hit him again.
And again.
“Keres!” Cadel says sharply.
There are people all around us, waking up and watching. Murmuring. Shocked by my aggression.
But not the alpha in front of me; he doesn’t raise a finger to protect himself.
I keep hitting him.
“KAIDA!” Jarek shouts.
I punch Mordecai’s chest and shout at him until I collapse against him, sobbing again. He brings his arms up and wraps them around me, and I hate I feel safe.
“I hate you.”
“I know. Kaida, I don’t blame you,” he whispers. “I am so sorry, but if it kept you alive, I would do it again and again.”
I glare up at him. “We’re strangers. We don’t know each other. Not really. How do you know you would keep me alive? I’m just no one.” I scream the last words.
I am no one.
Why would he come for me? Why would he save me? Why? Nothing makes sense, nothing-
“You’re everything,” he says with such fierceness that I’m immediately silenced.
“I might not know you, but my heart tells me I do, and when I sleep, I can hear you giggle when I’ve never heard it before.
I hear you calling my name, and I can see you in…
I know you. My heart, my soul, my mind, and my body know you, and I don’t know why.
And leaving you was the hardest thing I have ever done. ”
“You did it for the Resistance!” I howl. “You left me hanging in that trap to save them!”
“I did because she said if I didn’t do it, you’d die that night,” Mordecai roars back at me. “There is nothing, nothing on this Earth that is more important to me than you.”
I inhale sharply. “She’s a dream,” I protest with a whimper. “Just a dream; you couldn’t possibly know that.”
“So were you…and then you appeared,” Mordecai snaps.
“I dreamed about you for years. On all the nights I didn’t have a damn walking prophet telling me the miserable future, I dreamed of you.
And then you were there. Right in front of me, tied up and about to be taken to the worst place you could be taken, and I knew what I was getting into, but I would have ignored her and let the world burn.
What stopped me was you being on the line. ”
I stare up at him, struck by the intensity of his gaze. We’re chest-to-chest, his arms around me and mine holding onto his waist because as much as I want to hate him…I can’t. There is something in me that won’t let me.
“I don’t trust you,” I say instead.
“I don’t blame you, but I’m going to work damn hard every day to prove that I’m yours, to prove that you can.”
He reluctantly releases me, but I stay there staring at him, unable to move away.
When he turns to walk away, I almost scream.
The panic and fear is so strong my knees buckle.
I just manage to not take a step and hold myself up, swallowing the sound of my terror.
Before I can stop myself, I reach out, grabbing his hand, stopping him from leaving.
I cling tightly, my knuckles turning white.
“Don’t go.”
My words are so low I almost don’t hear them, but I know he does.
My chest tightens, and my throat squeezes. I blink rapidly, staring at his hand.
“Don’t go. Don’t disappear. I won’t be angry. I promise. Just please don’t go. Please, Mordecai,” my tears spill over, the hysterical whispers spilling from me. I can’t stop them. “Don’t go. Don’t die. I’m sorry, I’ll be good, I promise—”
Mordecai has me in his arms in seconds, holding me tight. “You be angry, as angry as you need to be, but I’m not going anywhere; I’m not going to disappear. We’re going to survive and sort this out together over years. I won’t leave you.”
Over his shoulder, I see Cadel and Jarek approach, tugging us into the shadows, shielding us from the eyes of the Resistance. Mordecai repeats his words over and over as I fall completely apart, more broken than I’ve ever been before.